Dimanche and Other Stories (15 page)

So I pretend to eat. The chauffeur, Auguste, gets out the car, and Monsieur and Madame leave.

Everything that happened afterward, I got from the
chauffeur, Auguste. What a Drama! We discussed it over and over again. From the moment they left in the car, I was shaking. That is to say, I could feel disaster in the air. When you’ve spent time with many Families and in many Houses, each one with its stories, its sorrows, and its secrets, I can assure Mademoiselle Monique that you can sense if a household is happy or unhappy. I used to know a butler—he drank, that’s probably why he was so sensitive—and if he went somewhere and felt an unhappy atmosphere, he thought, “No, I’m not staying here!” To my knowledge, he guessed correctly at least twice. Once it was a bankruptcy, the other time a robbery, both being most unpleasant for the servants.

August 7

I went up to see Mademoiselle, which proves how upset I felt. Perhaps Mademoiselle remembers? She was already twelve years old. I had no business in her room at that time of day; that wasn’t my job, but my heart was so full of pity for the children that I wanted to see them, especially Mademoiselle Monique, whom I’d always liked better than her brothers. I prefer girls. They’re much sweeter. Mademoiselle was in bed with a book, some cutting-out, and her knitting, like a little grown-up. She was working so well and so nimbly! I was the one who had taught her how to knit and
Mademoiselle was making a vest for my little niece; Mademoiselle Monique always had a kind heart.

I’d been with her for five minutes when we heard the car come back, then doors slamming, then nothing!

I thought, “Blessed Virgin! It’s happened!” Alas, I was right. It was all over.

According to Auguste, this is what happened: he had left the grounds and was speeding toward Le Blanc. He couldn’t tell me anything about the beginning of their conversation. Suddenly their voices grew louder and Auguste heard Madame say, “I beg you, I beg you.”

“No,” answered Monsieur, and he started to laugh, said Auguste, but quietly to himself, as if something was amusing him. That laugh seemed to drive his wife mad. She screamed loudly and almost immediately Auguste heard the shot. He couldn’t believe his ears. In fact, a revolver only makes a slight popping sound. He wondered what he’d heard, whether it might have been a burst tire, but in the mirror he saw Monsieur fall backward, blood pouring from his mouth. Poor Monsieur! He’d laughed for the last time.

By the time Auguste had stopped, opened the door, taken Monsieur in his arms, and laid him by the side of the road, he was no longer breathing. Then Auguste went back to Madame. She hadn’t moved; she was still holding the revolver; she clung on to it and he had to tear it from her hands. She didn’t say a word. Poor Auguste didn’t know what to do. He waited a good five
minutes, hoping that a member of the Family might come past, but nobody came and it was raining. As for Monsieur, it was obvious he was dead. In the end, Auguste gathered up the body again, put it in the car next to Madame, and came back to the Château. He said that during the whole journey Madame did not look at Monsieur once. Going around a bend, the body leaned forward like a live person and started sliding onto the floor, but Madame made no move to pick him up. When the car stopped in front of the steps, Monsieur had half-fallen out of his seat, his head bent toward the ground, and the trickle of blood that had been oozing from his mouth was making everything sticky. It made Auguste ill to see it, and still Madame said nothing, looking straight ahead, her head held high.

And that, Mademoiselle Monique, is what the whole world knows and what the papers at the time said about the terrible Tragedy which, you could say, created three orphans, since their father was taken by death and their mother would also be taken—by prison, by the trial, and by everything else, and after that her death, poor thing, at the age of thirty-eight.

Of course, the reply to everyone who asked, “What will happen to her?” was: “She’ll be acquitted. It was a crime of passion; there’s absolutely no reason to doubt it’ll be an acquittal, with their Money and their Connections.”

It is true, that if any murderer had an excuse, at first sight that one certainly did. Here was a woman who had been a perfect wife and a mother beyond reproach, with a husband who deceived her, who had put up with everything silently for the children’s sake, who had suffered for thirteen years; then one day along comes another woman who, not content with taking her Husband’s affections, wants to remove a father from his children … Ah! Mademoiselle Monique, poor little Mademoiselle Monique, never before had so many people talked about the three of you! Your pictures were in all the papers, along with one of Madame hugging you, and another of Madame in prison weeping for “her poor children,” and then, finally, at the trial, her lawyer had shown, as clear as daylight, that Madame had gone mad at the thought of her Husband wanting to abandon the Family he no longer loved, and after putting up with so much, she couldn’t tolerate the latest blow! He was a brilliant lawyer. The Family had spared no expense. I was told he had cost them a great deal, but he certainly earned his money. Everyone wept during the trial, even the women who had done their best to separate Madame from her husband were in tears, saying she was a Martyr.

Now that it’s all coming back to me, I can remember lots of things I thought I’d forgotten. I can’t stop myself from wanting Mademoiselle Monique to think of them, too. One should not let memories disappear just
because they are sad. When you’re old or ill like me and you can’t work any longer, it’s too sad thinking about tomorrow. Blessed Virgin, what would one do if there were nothing to remember? And here’s a funny thing: the memories I thought were happy ones, like the games with my friends at school and the orange my poor mother always gave me on New Year’s Day, are the ones that make me cry, and others that were so important—a boy who courted me and married another girl when I was twenty—just make me smile when I think of my grief at the time, as if there’s any man in the world worth crying over. So what I’m writing may make Mademoiselle sad for now, but one day it will matter less. She must believe her old servant!

It was the week after the Tragedy. Mademoiselle had recovered from the chicken pox, but she was very tired, so she was sent to bed at seven o’clock and had supper brought to her on a tray. One evening, as I went past the children’s room, I thought I heard someone crying. I opened the door quietly. Mademoiselle didn’t see me come in. She was lying on her side, hunched up against the wall, like a poor, shivering little bird! She was crying and, oh, Mademoiselle, she was scared of making any noise. She was holding back her tears with all her might, but a child can’t cry silently. You learn how to do that later.

I go in and say as gently as I could, “Why are you crying, Mademoiselle Monique?”

The children couldn’t have known anything about what had happened. Everything had been hidden from them, even Monsieur’s death. They weren’t yet going out and so it didn’t matter if they didn’t have any black clothes. There was plenty of time for that. They were told that Monsieur and Madame were traveling, which was easy, as of course Madame was in prison and Monsieur’s body had been taken back to Paris, where he had been buried two days earlier. I am absolutely certain that not a word could have reached the part of the house where the three children were living with their things and their toys and their nanny, who was very nice for an Englishwoman. However, that evening I realized you had guessed everything.

Mademoiselle wouldn’t answer me and made a huge effort to stop crying, but in vain.

I go even nearer and gently ask, “Are you ill, Mademoiselle Monique? Would you like a nice cup of sweet lime tea?”

Mademoiselle gave me such a sad look as she shook her head.

So I ask again, “What’s wrong, Mademoiselle Monique? Tell your old Clémence who loves you dearly.”

But Mademoiselle, always so sweet and polite, said, “No, there’s nothing wrong, really, my good Clémence.”

So I tuck her in and stay for a while, so as not to
leave her alone. Mademoiselle watched me, but was much too proud to ask for anything. I say, “Would you like me to stay with you until Miss comes back up?” (She had gone to have her dinner.)

Mademoiselle looks at me without smiling, but her face lights up and, very quietly, she says, “Oh, yes please, you’re so nice, you …”

So I hold her hand and stay like that, on a little chair next to the bed. I try to tell silly stories to make Mademoiselle Monique laugh. But she didn’t feel like laughing, poor little thing! She says, “Tell me about what you did when you were little. Talk to me about your papa and mama.”

I began to tell stories to cheer Mademoiselle up, but after a while I feel like crying myself. We had all been very tense since the Tragedy, and in any case no one ever shows any interest in the servants, or wonders if they’re happy or unhappy, nor even where they come from, where they lived, or who their Parents were; it’s as if you give up your past when you go into service.

Mademoiselle becomes calmer. I can hear Miss coming back up. I get up to leave. Just by the door I hear, “You’ll never leave, will you, Clémence?”

Then I understand that Mademoiselle had guessed everything and the poor little thing was hanging on to what was left of her childhood.

“Of course I’ll never leave.”

I left two months later. It was four months before the
trial. Because of the children I didn’t want to leave. But putting up with the Countess, who was now managing everything—and I thought it would be a lot worse when Madame came back—that was beyond me. The Countess actually wanted me to wait at table! Mademoiselle well knows that wasn’t my job! I was senior chambermaid and seamstress. I was offered a position in the Rue du Bac, which meant I would have to move but would be nearer a friend who was a cook in the same part of Paris: we used to go out together every Sunday. It suited me as I didn’t have to pay the cost of transport when I visited her. It was a good position. I accepted it; I stayed five years and was very happy there. Leaving Mademoiselle Monique broke my heart. But I did it.

The day of the trial came. I was in a terrible state, the reason for which Mademoiselle will soon understand. I was a witness, but with nothing much to say. They wanted to make me declare that Madame had lived only for her children. I realized that the lawyer wanted to impress that on the jury, so I said, “Madame was an excellent mother. Even though I am no longer in Madame’s service, I hope that she will soon be returned to her poor children and to the household which needs her, and so I sorted out everything, her room and even the cupboards, before I left. Madame need not worry.”

I knew that I was making a fool of myself. My God, how they laugh, people who don’t understand, and
luckily nobody did. Except for Madame. She understood immediately! She stood up and, pale as she was, went even paler, and collapsed with a loud cry. In some ways nothing could have been better for her than that cry and the long fainting fit that followed. It made an excellent impression on the jury. In the public gallery people were murmuring, “Poor woman. How she must have suffered.”

I won’t repeat what the lawyer said or any of the things Mademoiselle can read in the newspapers of the time, if she’s interested. What they said about Monsieur! Women, Madame’s friends, chambermaids, immoral women, the lot! No doubt there was a lot of truth in what they said, but a lot of lies as well, I shouldn’t wonder. But the lawyer was right: Monsieur was dead and it made no odds to him, to say nothing of the fact that a man can have as many women as he likes—with no stain on his honor. Quite the opposite. The lawyer was right to think only about saving the woman who was left behind from disgrace and condemnation. Anyway, that’s what he was being paid for. He had to do his job.

He did it conscientiously and she was acquitted, just as everyone thought she would be.

August 8

I’m hoping to finish my letter today, Mademoiselle, but what’s left is the hardest to say.

A year before the Tragedy, I had begun to notice a change in Madame. It was the way she dressed. There was a spring in her step and there was a sense of hope in her face and the way she spoke. It’s quite true what they say: What Woman wants, God wants. There was no doubt that she wanted, as never before, to be pretty, and she had almost become so. Before, she dressed conventionally, austerely, as if, you might say, she was afraid of being noticed. Suddenly there were lovely dresses and pretty underwear. Another time, it was a new hairstyle. I thought she wanted to get her husband back. I did my best to help her. A good chambermaid or lady-in-waiting can do a great deal, Mademoiselle, for a Lady’s appearance and sometimes I had made so bold as to offer her advice. When I was young, I worked for a Kept Woman and I knew about beauty treatments and how to help her show off her complexion and figure to best advantage. Madame had perfect skin. But when I said, “Madame must listen to me, Madame should do this or that, she’s still young,” she shook her head sadly.

“There’s no point, dear Clémence!”

She was a very unhappy woman. It was in her character not to be able to accept things as they were, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to try to change them. It was the same with the children: she tried to console herself with her little ones for not having the love of a Man and, aware that they didn’t console her enough, she took it out on her innocent children. She never
found them beautiful enough, bonny enough, or well behaved enough to make up for all that she had lost.

Mademoiselle Monique, one day Madame had had an argument with Monsieur. He had left the drawing room and she stayed there alone. Then Monsieur’s secretary, Monsieur Jean Pécaud, arrived. He went into the room. Mademoiselle can be quite sure that, whatever happened between the two of them that day, nobody said anything to me and I saw nothing; but, all the same, it’s strange that, after going in there at three o’clock, he didn’t come out until five.

After he’d gone, Madame rang and told me to tidy the room. I found Madame’s handkerchief, soaked with tears, underneath the cushions on the armchair. She’d certainly been crying when Monsieur Pécaud arrived. What he did or said to console her, no one will ever know, for Death has claimed her, and Monsieur Pécaud won’t brag about it now that he’s married and rich, or so I’m told.